Ann of Cambray by Mary Lide

scent clear. When I came to the great inner courtyard, the hunt was already gathered. Lord Raoul and his guards were mounted, he on the black beast that Giles had tried to groom, many of his chiefest nobles about him. No doubt, he was using this as a way to woo them to his plans, but I thought it too fair a day to be thinking of war and diplomacy. I watched Lord Raoul as his horse moved skittishly at the centre of his entourage. It was the first time I had seen him surrounded by his court since the day in the garden when we were children playing together. I noted how even Cecile pushed forward with Geoffrey beside her. I did not care to join them. It was enough that Lord Raoul had remembered his promise and sent me word. Now I would show him what Cambray and I could do.
    The horse the Lady Mildred had chosen for me was a pony, so fat and small I daresay it could not have cantered a length. I said not a word as Giles helped me mount, although I could almost have straddled it from the ground. Half-puzzled, half-amused, Giles mounted his own bay that Lord Raoul had given him. He rode better than he had a year ago, but then he had practised in the meanwhile as I had not. We waited in the shadow of the wall as the rest of the hunt went across the drawbridge towards the forest. A brave sight they made in their finery and plumes, the horses leaping, the peasants shouting as they passed. When they were out of sight, Giles and I urged our own beasts as far as we could to the meadow close to the river’s edge. He had kept his word, too. The grey horse was waiting cropping grass. An old saddle was slung upon its back, and it was already bridled. But when I came beside it, and measured its height, and thought again how it, too, had been unused to riding these last months, my heart almost quailed. Yet I pulled up my skirts, Cecile’s skirts rather, and beckoned Giles to help me up. Finally we got the beast to stand still so that he could swing me high upon its back. I had always ridden bareback before, but this was a knight’s saddle, high in the front so that it would take a lance to knock you out of it. I rode astride and Giles helped me pull my skirts down about my knees, his face still mournful with doubt.
    ‘Good cheer,’ I told him. ‘If I am in at the kill you shall have the credit.’
    ‘And if you fall?’
    ‘No one will blame you, and I requite you here of my death.’ I laughed at him. ‘This will be better sport than you or I have ever known. Go and enjoy it. Tell them the truth if they ask, that I could not keep up with you on Lady Mildred’s pet, so found one more to my liking. And when you come to Cambray you shall have a grey horse of your own.’
    He released the reins. I let the horse plunge forward. At first I was frightened. I had forgotten how fast it could run, and it had certainly forgotten me. And I had never let it go full tilt like this; only once, when it had saved us from the men in the clearing. But gradually confidence came back, and it was certainly easier to sit in the saddle than bareback.
    The hunt was far ahead now and I could hear the huntsmen’s horns along the distant rides. But I knew the forest better than most who were riding there, and once I could quiet the horse enough, I steered it in a circle so that, guessing from wind and weather, I would come across them which way they must go to follow the game. For all that was said and done afterwards that ride was one of the memories of my life. I have said before that I felt strange kinship when I rode, as if my father and Cambray and I were one, and I thought of my brother’s prophecy that one day I should ride as well as they had ever done. So that when the hounds drove the quarry to bay, although I could not see what game we chased, at least I was there abreast with it, although farther to one side than the others. And without hesitation, I thrust my horse through the thickets that